2010 MacBook Pro 15" 2.66GHz Core i7: both cores always running full speed

Thanks for your response. The reason I'm concerned is because it results in terrible battery life.

Thank you for your response. Yes, I am aware of CoolBook and xnu-speedstep; I was curious to know if there was any native (non-3rd-party) way to accomplish the clock-speed controlling. I am aware that faster CPU clock speeds = greater performance. However, in the scenario that concerns me, I have many Chrome tabs open, but all of them have finished downloading and Flash is being blocked. Also, in that I can only be interacting with a single Chrome tab at a time, the JavaScript interpreter instances should be idle for the other tabs. So in this scenario, I don't think I need the fastest clock speed. I'd gladly trade off battery life for performance.

My battery life isn't that terrible; I get around 3 hours when my computer's CPU's cores are running at their max clock speed. If I close all my Chrome tabs except for one, I get roughly double the battery life, which is more in line with what I was led to believe when I bought this computer. Something I forgot to mention earlier is that this battery is only 3 months old.

Below is the requested information. Thank you for your assistance.

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Battery Information:

Model Information:
Serial Number: XXXXXXXXXXXXX
Manufacturer: SMP
Device name: bq20z451
Pack Lot Code: 0000
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 0201
Hardware Revision: 000a
Cell Revision: 0157
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 6648
Fully charged: No
Charging: Yes
Full charge capacity (mAh): 6935
Health Information:
Cycle count: 18
Condition: Normal
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 887
Voltage (mV): 12562

System Power Settings:

AC Power:
System Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Display Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Wake On AC Change: No
Wake On Clamshell Open: Yes
Wake On LAN: Yes
Current Power Source: Yes
Display Sleep Uses Dim: Yes
GPUSwitch: 2
Battery Power:
System Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Display Sleep Timer (Minutes): 2
Wake On AC Change: No
Wake On Clamshell Open: Yes
Display Sleep Uses Dim: Yes
GPUSwitch: 2
Reduce Brightness: Yes

Hardware Configuration:

UPS Installed: No

AC Charger Information:

Connected: Yes
ID: 0x0100
Wattage (W): 85
Revision: 0x0000
Family: 0x00ba
Serial Number: 0x00c7c005
Charging: Yes

Thank you all for all your suggestions. I found the problem: The processes for three of my Google Chrome tabs were each consuming roughly 5% CPU, even though Flash had been disabled by a blocker. Killing these 3 tabs allowed the CPU's core clock frequencies to drop down from being pegged at their max values. Consequently, my estimated battery life went from around 3 hours to around 6 hours.

Thanks! In case you're interested, one of the offending sites in question was http://www.boston.com. I found that opening this website in Safari consumes even more CPU than opening it in Chrome. I'm not sure what it is about this website that makes the browser chew so many cycles, but I'm just glad that I found the culprits.

I was using a utility called MSR Tools to monitor the CPU cores' clock speeds, and was using a utility called gfxCardStatus for the graphics cards. This latter utility lets you specify that only the integrated graphics card, or only the discrete graphics card, be used, or allow it to dynamically switch as usual.